


Blood Ties

by schizoauthoress



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: F/M, Gen, Rating currently for strong language, Road Trips, Vampires, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 19:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17127626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schizoauthoress/pseuds/schizoauthoress
Summary: The grin was back on the Vampire Warrior's face.  "And you two... you're the rarest kind of weird.  Not only do you want to be turned, but you might actually make decent vampires."[If the Brood was meant to based on 'The Lost Boys'... this is how Adam and Jay got themselves lost.]Merry Christmas, I bring you vampires!





	Blood Ties

"We're not getting anywhere this way," Jason complained. He kicked at a half-crushed aluminum soda can on the ground. It skittered along the pavement and bounced off the curb into the gutter.

"Do you want to give up?" Adam demanded, "Is that what you're trying to say?"

Jason glared. "Yeah right. I go home, your stubborn ass keeps trekking around dark corners, and you eventually come back all fangy and smug. We started this together, and we're sticking together. I just think our current plan needs a little revising."

"What's your big idea, if you're so smart?" 

Jason stopped walking, put his back to the pole of the nearest streetlamp, and stuck his hands in his pockets. His voice went softer. "We went around to a bunch of different wrestling promotions, and we didn't get anywhere close to the Vampire Warrior. We've been trying to find him in these vampire hangouts, but it seems pretty damn obvious he's not into this scene. Maybe he knows we're looking for him. Maybe he thinks we're desperate weirdos and he's avoiding us."

"That's a lot of maybe, Jay," Adam said sharply.

"There's been a couple vampires who seem interested in turning us! Those women last week? That big guy who saved us from those hellhounds?"

Adam shouted, "No! We are not--!" He made an inarticulate sound of rage and aimed a kick at a nearby trash can. "We are not fucking settling for the first couple bloodsuckers who bat their damn eyes at us!"

"I'm not saying that!" Jason snapped. "But we could offer some blood. It's probably gone around that we're interested in becoming vampires. We should actually show it?"

"It has to be the Vampire Warrior who turns us!" Adam looked for a moment like he wanted to start throwing hands. Jason met Adam's wide-eyed stare, but didn't move. Adam took a deep breath and realized he was shaking. He insisted, "It has to be."

"I know," Jason replied, deliberately calm. "I read all the same occult books you did, Adam."

Laughter. The sound bounced off the close-set buildings around them, and neither young man could tell where it was coming from. Despite, or perhaps because of, their experiences with the supernatural side of life, both of them were afraid.

"Now I've _got_ to know," the unfamiliar voice of a man said, also seeming to come from multiple directions, "just what those books say..."

Jason and Adam moved to stand back to back with each other, as they glanced around the dark street trying to locate this mysterious speaker.

"What the fuck!" Jason hissed.

Adam shouted, "Quit fucking around and show your face!"

"That's not gonna get us killed or anything," Jason groaned. He felt a breath beside his ear and yelped in shock -- Adam following him a second after he scrambled away from... whatever. They looked back toward the streetlamp.

A man stood in the yellowish light. He looked about as tall as Jason, but was built on much broader lines. His curly blond hair was slicked back, revealing multiple silver-colored hoops in each ear; his loose white shirt was partially open, revealing part of his broad chest and that he wore some kind of pendant around his neck; and his pants and boots were black. He was fair-skinned, but not especially pale.

He didn't seem all that remarkable, or even that threatening. Then he grinned at them, displaying long, sharp fangs.

"So, what do you think?" the vampire asked. When neither of them responded, he laughed. "You told me show my face. What do you think of it?"

Adam and Jason exchanged a brief glance. And Adam said, "I think you're a little cracked, buddy."

The vampire's grin faded away as he made an exaggerated show of thinking that assessment over. He put a hand to his chin and hummed thoughtfully and nodded. "You might be on to something there. But what does it say about you two, that you don't even recognize the man you've been chasing after for months?"

Jason answered, "We never got very close to the Vampire Warrior, if that's what you mean."

"I get a lot of... very weird fans." the vampire said. "I had to be sure that you weren't the garden variety weird, the gothy 'please make me a child of the night' weird, or the Bible-thumping, stake brandishing variety of weird."

"Get a lot of that last kind?" Adam asked.

"Occasionally." The grin was back on the Vampire Warrior's face. "And you two... you're the rarest kind of weird. Not only do you want to be turned, but you might actually make decent vampires."

And with that declaration, he darted forward, faster than either of the humans could follow. Both Adam and Jason felt a strong hand grab at one side of their head -- there was an explosion of dazzling pain as the backs of their skulls collided together, and the gold glitters across their vision faded into the black of unconsciousness.

****

"Now, don't worry. I'm not actually going to turn them until you get to meet them," the Vampire Warrior said calmly into the phone. 

He was perched on the edge one of the two double-sized beds in tonight's hotel room, speaking to Luna Vachon. They'd last seen each other in March, each picking up victories in an IWA Mid-South event, and parted ways when he decided to finally seek out his two persistent shadows.

"It's not like they won't believe me. And at the very least, I can get them to handle some of the driving to my next show."

Behind him, the taller of the young men groaned and shifted around. A quick glance at the man -- Adam, he remembered -- reassured the Vampire Warrior that consciousness was still eluding the human. He looked at the bed where he'd put the other one -- Jay, he was fairly certain -- and grinned when he saw the blond squinting at him in the dark.

"I have to go, princess; one of them is awake," the Vampire Warrior said. "We'll see you very soon, I promise."

Jay watched him hang up the phone, then sat up and asked, "Who was that?"

"My wife," the Vampire Warrior answered simply.

Jay's brows drew together as he absorbed that piece of information. The Vampire Warrior watched him with obvious amusement, wondering if the human was going to embarrass himself. But all Jay asked was, "Is she a vampire, too?"

"No, she's something else entirely." The Vampire Warrior leaned forward. "Have you heard of Luna Vachon?"

Jay brightened up. "I remember her! She was one of the Daughters of Darkness!"

"Oh, she's gonna like you," the Vampire Warrior chuckled. He stood, then walked over to the window. He could feel Jay watching him. After letting the silence stretch out a little longer, the Vampire Warrior asked, "Why is it so important that I turn you boys?"

"We've... been trying to break into the business. Indie promotions, mostly. Jobbing to learn the ropes. But it, uh, hasn't been working out so well. Adam's convinced we need... more of an edge to get over."

"And you think vampirism is that edge?"

"Well..." Jay shrugged. "Being supernaturally strong, able to take more physical punishment than a human, able to heal faster..."

"Always thirsting for human blood," the Vampire Warrior interrupted, "always having to control that strength so that you don't kill someone."

"Yes," Jay said simply. "But you can teach us how. You've been doing this for ages. And... we've seen you out in the sun. Since Adam read that strengths and special traits get passed from sire to childe..."

The Vampire Warrior laughed. Adam stirred again, but when the vampire turned to look at him, his eyes remained closed.

"That's not wrong. The sun resistance was earned by my sire, and she passed it to me."

Jay made a thoughtful sound, considering, then asked, "Would it be weaker with us, or would we be just as resistant?"

"I'm just as resistant to the sun as Keziah," the Vampire Warrior said with a shrug, then clarified, "My sire, I mean. I don't see why it would be weaker with you two. If I turn you. I haven't made up my mind yet."

"And we have to meet your wife first, right?" Then, without waiting for the Vampire Warrior's reply, Jay snatched a pillow up from the bed. To the vampire's amusement, the human threw the pillow at his friend's head. Jay said, "Hey, Adam! Wake up already!" 

After the impact to his face, Adam flailed around a bit in confusion until he thought to sit up and the pillow fell to the side. His eyes were wide and wild as he looked around the darkened room. "What the-- where the _fuck_...?"

"See, if you woke up the same time as me, you would have heard the end of the Vampire Warrior's phone call and everything," Jay informed his friend.

Adam's head swiveled in the general direction of Jay's voice -- accuracy hampered by his human senses, the Vampire Warrior surmised -- and he scowled. "Excuse me for not recovering as quick from being bonked on the head -- I got hit with _your_ thick skull, after all!"

"Oh, whine bitch moan," Jay shot back cheerfully. His tone was unfitting for their situation, and served only to irritate Adam further. Adam slung the pillow back at Jay, who dodged the wrong way in the dark. The pillow smacked loudly into Jay's shoulder and neck, but he only laughed. It seemed that Adam's annoyance had been Jay's goal in this exchange -- if so, he was triumphant.

The Vampire Warrior snickered at their antics. He'd caught how the fear and tension in Adam had dissipated somewhat at the sound of Jay's voice, even in their strange surroundings. 

As a human called David, while he'd gotten along with others, he'd never had a friend he could be so relaxed with. Nor had the Vampire Warrior missed the confidence they had in their ability to fight off a threat together, when he'd first approached them. For all their bickering and complaining, these two felt safe in each other's presence.

"Your friend keeps mentioning books and reading," the Vampire Warrior said, addressing Adam. The young man startled, briefly, but looked at him steadily. Good, both humans' eyes were adjusted to the darkness of the room by now. "Is that the only way you've learned about my kind?"

"There were some vampire hunters we talked to," Adam answered.

Maybe someone else would get angry at that comment -- angry at the idea that these two who wanted to be turned had been talking with humans that hunted vampires. But the Vampire Warrior thought if a vampire was stupid enough to draw hunters to him, he deserved to be staked. There were ways to avoid the wrong kind of attention.

Jay huffed out a humorless laugh. "They got pretty pissed when they realized we weren't actually interested in killing vampires so much as being turned."

"Yeah, well, most vampires aren't as nice as I am."

Adam lifted his left hand to rub the back of his head, wincing when his fingers encountered the sore spot on his skull, and dropped his hand lower to rest at the side of his neck. He had to remember that. Even if he was irritated with being knocked out and dragged into a hotel room while unconscious, things could have been much worse. Adam had woken up with a headache, but he could have not woken up at all.

Adam said, "You strike me as a lot more... in control than others we've heard about --"

"Or seen in action," Jay interjected. When the Vampire Warrior turned a questioning glance his way, Jay clarified, "We helped those hunters clear out a... a vampire nest while we were still in Canada." 

"A nest?" the Vampire Warrior cackled, "You're talking about vampires, not _birds_!"

"That's what the hunters called it!" Jay protested. "Anyway. The vampires there were..."

"Vicious," Adam suggested, when Jay trailed off. Jay nodded.

"I can be pretty bad myself," the Vampire Warrior said, grinning again. "You boys just haven't given me a reason to be. Not much does."

Both Adam and Jay lapsed into a tense silence at that, exchanging looks with each other. They were clearly aware of their human fragility, and they took his comment as a reminder NOT to give him a reason to get vicious. The Vampire Warrior laughed again. 

"Don't worry. So far, you two seem all right. But I'm not going to decide whether to turn you or not by tonight."

"You're not?" Adam asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

"It's not like feeding; that's a simple call. Can you get away with it, or not?" The Vampire Warrior shook his head. "Turning someone into a vampire has lasting consequences, for you and for them. You'll always have a bond to your sire, and to your childe. When you say you want to be turned by me, whatever your reasons are, what you're doing is asking to join my family."

"And you want to get to know us first," Adam said. He looked over at Jay. "Well, now we're doomed. He gets to know what an asshole you are, and he's not gonna want that around for eternity."

Jay slung another pillow right into Adam's face.

****

The Vampire Warrior settled into the back seat of his rental car, leaning one elbow against the stack of baggage that took up the space behind the driver's seat. The driver's seat was currently occupied by Adam, with Jay sitting in the front passenger seat and poring over a map.

"You good?" Adam asked Jay.

Jay glanced toward his friend, then back at the map, then back up again. "Yeah, I've got it handled. If you'll listen to me this time."

"Once!" Adam exclaimed, laughing, "One time I didn't listen to your directions --"

"And we got lost in Kansas!" Jay interrupted. He twisted in his seat to look back at the Vampire Warrior. "This guy got us lost in Kansas! Nothing but corn for miles. I'm trying to read the map but there's no landmarks! Just corn, corn, corn --"

"Some wheat," Adam chimed in.

"Shut up," Jay shot back, without any heat to it. 

The Vampire Warrior grinned. "With your luck, guys, I'm surprised you didn't run afoul of the corn wolves."

This time, Adam turned to look at him, disbelief evident in every line of his expression. "What the fuck are corn wolves?"

"They're a kind of.... what was the word Jesse used..." He traced a tiny circle in the air with his hand, as if the motion could jog his long memory. When it came to him, he snapped his fingers and declared, "They're feldgeister! Malevolent spirit that haunts the crops."

Jay, clearly confused, muttered, "What...?" under his breath.

"Oh, there's all kinds of wild shit lurking on the fringes of the mundane world you know. Let's get driving, and I'll tell you all about it."

****

The first leg of that initial drive was informative on the subject of so many weird and mystical things, but somehow the conversation never led to vampires. When he'd found himself in similar situations in the past, Adam would get really frustrated. People who were 'in the know' about certain subjects always talked around what they knew instead of addressing it directly, until they figured out that you were 'in the know' as well.

But then how was someone supposed to get anywhere? In Adam's experience, it was sheer chance. He didn't believe in luck. Sometimes, though, he just 'clicked' with a person -- they liked him (or Jay) enough to drop a hint, give a lead to more knowledge, even if they shouldn't. They'd mention where to go, who to talk to, sometimes what to ask, and -- critically -- what not to do. 

Apparently, that's what happened with the Vampire Warrior -- or, as he insisted they call him, Dave -- he liked the two of them enough, from that initial conversation in the hotel, that he was willing to ride with them. 

Long trips in the car often turned into labyrinthine discussions, especially when the radio stations faded out into static, and only brief snatches of conversation from the disc jockeys managed to break through. Jay and Adam had debated the finer points of which supernatural creature to approach, and then which type of vampire might be best, and finally how to track down and convince the Vampire Warrior to give them a chance.

Now here they were, in the Vampire Warrior's car, and he was rambling on about an incident with a band of chupacabra in the 1970s. This had absolutely nothing to do with their suitability to become vampires themselves, or what becoming a vampire would entail before or after the act. And yet...

"Wait wait wait," Adam said, interrupting the story. "Hold on. I just want to be clear. When you say this was a 'band' of chupacabra, you don't mean, like, with musical instruments or something, do you?"

Dave laughed. "Nah, nah. They don't really have the self control to blend in with mundane humans. I mean a group. I don't know if they were all one bloodline or if they were just, you know, castoffs."

"Castoffs?" Jay prompted.

"Okay, there's other names for what they are. 'Chupacabra' comes from Puerto Rico, and it's a pretty new, as a name. You'll always hear reports of creatures messing with humans or their livestock or their pets. Humans come up with some wild explanations for it, but anyway. In the vampire circles I moved in, in the seventies, we pretty much called them 'ghouls'."

"Yeah, I've seen that term in the books," Adam said. He was excited, but tried not to let it show too much. Finally, a chance to direct the conversation toward the subject that Dave had seemingly avoided so far. "Failed vampires, right? Something about the turning doesn't go right?"

"Uh huh," Dave answered, but then he clicked his tongue and shook his head. "No, wait. Maybe not like you're thinking. If a turning doesn't take, if you didn't do it right, then you've just got a dead human that you wasted time feeding your blood. Ghouls were successfully changed. They come back. But they can't... they just can't handle it."

"How do you mean?"

"It's a trip," Dave replied. "The older I get, the further I get from being a human, and I can't remember too good what being a human was like. The way you guys, you know, think and feel and experience the world -- it's totally different from the way I see things."

"So it's a shock to the system," Jay mused.

"More powerful senses, that kind of thing," Adam pointed out.

"Yeah, it's..." Dave made a thoughtful noise, considering his phrasing or perhaps just debating how much detail to tell them. Adam figured it was a pretty personal thing they were asking about. Dave lightly thumped a fist against his leg before speaking again. "I woke up. I felt... I still felt like me? But... I could hear the people downstairs. In the boarding house, we all ate breakfast and dinner together, and I could hear them all down there... I focused on their breathing, and I could hear the heartbeats. I knew it meant blood, and the moment I thought about blood, it was like that was all I could think of. I heard my sire, too, I heard her down there talking to --"

Dave stopped, cleared his throat, and fell silent. Jay and Adam exchanged a glance -- Adam shook his head minutely, trying to silently warn Jay away from pressing the matter. A wrinkle appeared between Jay's brows as he frowned at Adam and mouthed, 'I wasn't gonna!' without any sound.

"Well, hearing her voice made me focus in on her," David started again, "and then she knew I was awake and she reached through our bond and that brought the blood hunger down to a level where I could still think. I could hold on to the idea of being human, or passing as a human. I... had my reasons, and she knew. Self control, that's big in our bloodline, and it's important to keep your new childe under control until he -- or she -- can do it themselves."

"That's not the case in all bloodlines?" Adam asked.

(Jay made a face, practically radiating annoyance at him. Adam could tell, with near certainty, that Jay was thinking something along the lines of -- oh I shouldn't speak but it's totally okay if you ask questions now.)

"Nah, some bloodlines see humans as totally beneath them. They let their new vampires rampage and then go in to clean up and explain themselves. You get more ghouls that way. Or, when it comes to Moca, what folks would eventually call chupacabra."

"But I heard those things that drain blood from goats and whatever have spines on their back," Jay pointed out. "They're supposed to be all scabby and gross, too."

"Trust me, man, ghouls can get pretty scabby and gross!" Dave declared, then laughed loudly.

Adam found himself joining in, and even Jay huffed out a little chuckle at the mental picture of a ghoulish vampire skulking around and picking at its own skin. 

"Anyway," Dave continued, "when you turn a human into a vampire, some of them can't handle the change. They might not give in to the impulse to cause mayhem and wreck shit, but, like, they can't act like a human anymore. The drive to feed, to attack people, is too powerful. They run away from people, but... you know, they gotta eat."

Jay nodded, "Yeah, everything needs to eat."

"That's why you hear about them out in the boonies and shit. Rural places, right?" 

Adam and Jay both made noises of agreement when Dave paused.

"Ghouls might want to make a meal out of a human, but they lose their nerve, you know? Hell, if I come across too intense, people read me as creepy and they make tracks. A ghoul can't control himself; he's gonna give himself away. And if you can't control yourself, you can't control the situation -- you might fuck up and the prey gets away." Dave shifted around in the backseat. Maybe he shrugged, Adam was busy checking the side mirrors and didn't see. "Prey that gets away knowing it was prey is dangerous. Rumors spread enough and you get an angry mob, if not a vampire hunter, ready to fuck up your nights."

Adam said, "Ghouls go for animals instead of humans because animals are easier."

"Pretty much, yeah. The thing is, the blood hunger isn't really about the blood."

Jay chimed in, "That doesn't make sense."

"Sure it does, once you know why most vampires drink blood to begin with," Dave replied. "There's other vampires that don't drink blood. It's all about the vital essence. Living creatures have it. Vampires don't, and we have to feed on the truly living in order to get it. Humans are best, because we used to be human, but most vampire bloodlines can feed on animals, too."

"Oh!" Jay said, "And that's why chupacabras and ghouls are all nasty? Because they aren't feeding on the essence that's best for them -- just whatever they can get."

"You got it."

"Huh," Adam said, drawing out the next word as he said it, "Interesting."

****

"They're such nerds," Luna declared, once she got her husband alone in their hotel room. "With all that sci fi stuff they bicker about, sometimes it sounds like they're not speaking English."

"Well, they're Canadian," Dave pointed out, "I think French did slip in to their argument at one point."

Luna laughed, "Just a little." She went over to the bed, where her suitcase was sitting on the mattress, and opened it up. "Still, they did agree to check out that new club with us, so they're not completely square."

"Do you really not like them, princess?"

"What?" The question slipped out harsher than she'd intended, as she lifted her head to look at Dave. Confused, Luna asked, "Why does it matter if I like them? You're the vampire here."

"Because they're going to be hanging around you just as much as they will me, when we're not on the road separately." Dave regarded her seriously. "Luna, if you really don't like them, I won't turn them."

" _What_? No, no, no, no, no!" Luna stalked over to her vampire husband and pointed angrily in his face. She shouted, "First off, you aren't using me as an excuse to turn down those boys! Secondly, if you tell them that, I'll kick you right in the ass, David!"

"I wouldn't use you as an excuse, Luna!" Dave shouted back. He drew back, sighed, and said in a quieter voice, "I wouldn't say any of that to their faces. But I won't be responsible for putting you in danger. If something about Jason or Adam feels 'off' to you... I trust your instincts." 

Luna regarded him in sullen silence for a moment. Then, her expression cleared. She moved her extended hand and clapped him right on the bicep -- he moved with the blow, so she didn't hurt herself -- as she laughed raucously. "Why didn't you say it like that in the first place?"

Dave shook his head a little, unable to keep from chuckling himself. Even on a human, that would have felt like nothing worse than a friendly, exuberant slap on the back. Luna was excitable at times, when she was in a good mood, but wasn't intending to hurt him.

"I don't know," Dave answered her question. "Just nervous, I guess. I've only turned one other person before, and Donovan was a dhampir. Keziah and the others say there's no real difference between turning a human and turning a dhampir, but..."

"You still worry," Luna finished. This time, when she reached out, she patted Dave gently on the cheek. "That's because you're a good guy, David. But I think you can trust your sire on this, can't you?"

Dave smiled wryly. Luna wasn't a vampire. Luna wasn't a mystical creature -- her blood, at least, tasted human -- but she certainly wasn't mundane. She knew exactly how important a vampire's sire was -- how a vampire craved to please their sire, and make their sire proud, even long after striking out on their own. 

"You're right," he told her. "I haven't made my mind up anyway."

"Seeing how they act in different surroundings can only help with that!" Luna exclaimed. "Going to the club is a _great_ idea."

"If it's another techno place, I'll just deal with the headache and be glad of the easy hunting."

*-*-*-*-*


End file.
